MDJ 2007.08.14 re-issued

One of the delays we've seen has been that in the process of retooling for the new world, we keep managing to break things. Our slightly revised PDF production process uses Acrobat Professional 8 tools to slim down the PDF files, but we found out the hard way today that "Discard external cross-references" apparently, to Acrobat, means "throw away some, but not all, URL destinations in the document." This left MDJ 2007.08.14 in an interesting state for readers—although all of the URLs were properly styled in blue text indicating clickable links, half or more of them actually were not clickable hyperlinks. Once we figured this out, it was easy enough to fix. We can't re-mail the PDF issue to subscribers (and many of you wouldn't want us to, anyway), but we've re-generated and re-signed "Version 2" of MDJ 2007.08.14 and placed both the uncompressed and Zip-compressed PDF files in the RSS feeds. (The old RSS feed has only the Zip-compressed version, of course, but the new feed has both. The link above is to the uncompressed PDF version for those who want to read it on the iPhone, and requires an MDJ user ID and password to access.) For reference, the older (incorrect, version 1) PDF file was 221,470 bytes long, and its ZIP archive was 208,152 bytes. The newer, correct version 2 PDF file is 225,351 bytes, and the ZIP archive is 211,404 bytes. (This is listed in the new RSS feed, but it never hurts to document it.) We apologize for any inconvenience. # - Posted to MDJ on 8/14/07; 3:19:09 PM

New RSS feed testing!

If you're slightly adventurous and would like to test the new and improved MDJ and MWJ RSS feeds, here they are: New MDJ RSS feed New MWJ RSS feed We've implemented a bunch of changes to try to make issues more accessible to subscribers (and, in enlightened self-interest, reduce the amount of time we have to spend getting them to you if E-mail fails): The feeds are regular unsecured http feeds, which should solve the problems with numerous non-NetNewsWire newsreaders either refusing to read the feeds or not updating them properly. There's absolutely no reason the old way shouldn't work, but the fact is that in a lot of readers, it doesn't. The issues themselves, however, are still for subscribers only. The links go to the https secure site and require your user ID and password, but every reader we've tested can handle that (handing off to your browser if necessary). You can even read PDF issues on the iPhone! Each issue's entry includes links to the issue in both PDF and setext format, and the PDF is available both uncompressed and as a ZIP archive. This lets you retrieve any version at any time, even read the PDF version on the iPhone. The enclosure element still refers to the ZIP file - each item can have only one enclosure, and for compatibility, we've kept that as the ZIP-compressed PDF version. If you set your newsreader not to download enclosures automatically, you can choose which format you want on an issue-by-issue basis. This is the first time we've made uncompressed PDF and setext versions available other than by E-mail, and we know a lot of you have asked for it over the years, so we're pleased to roll it out. If you have any problems with the new feeds, please let us know through the normal channels. The previous RSS feeds are still there, and will be maintained at least until the PDF-in-E-mail changes noted earlier are implemented. Once everything is debugged, we'll adjust the old feeds to permanently redirect to the new ones, so those who don't keep up won't have to do anything - your newsreader will automagically pick up the new feed at the new place from then on. (Or should, at least. We've learned that what newsreaders do and what they're supposed to do are often two different things. But we remain optimistic.) # - Posted to MDJ, MWJ on 7/16/07; 9:13:15 PM

MDJ on iPhone is really cool

Well, we think so, at least. We can't really take sharp pictures of it, but try mailing yourself a PDF issue of MDJ or MWJ, making sure you don't compress it with Zip or StuffIt or anything else. Then read the message on iPhone - at the bottom of the page, you'll see an attachments button that lets you open and read the PDF right there on the phone, with the proper font rendering and everything. Frankly, this surprises us, but we're not complaining. OK, we're complaining about two things: iPhone's PDF reader does not recognize hyperlinks within a PDF document. You can see that something is a link from the blue text, but tapping it does nothing. Even though MDJ is presented in two columns, iPhone's double-tap-zoom metaphor does nothing but zoom the full page to fit the iPhone's screen. We even tried testing an older issue of MDJ that had PDF articles defined for the text, allowing Acrobat and Acrobat Reader to follow stories across columns and pages automaticcally. No dice - iPhone's PDF viewer knows nothing about them, so they don't provide any advantages. (Ironically, we stopped including the "article" features in MDJ and MWJ in 2002 with the new design because Adobe InDesign has no way to generate them from columns and text frames on the page. InDesign has its own PDF export that does a good job in many areas, but this has been a glaring omission since version 1.0.) We've always compressed MDJ and MWJ issues for delivery for a few reasons: The #1 error we used to get in delivery was "mailbox full," so naturally we want the issues to be as small as possible. In the days of Mac OS 9, compression was necessary to include HFS metadata, like the file type 'PDF ' and the creator type 'CARO', necessary to allow double-clicking the file to open Acrobat. When we started this 11 years ago, most people didn't have broadband services, and those outside the US were slower than those here. Downloading big files could take a long time. We've long considered ditching the compression and sending the file as MIME type "application/pdf" because Mac OS X's "Mail" application can display uncompressed PDFs inline, but that would have left people who want compressed files without options, on top of rewriting our software to do the new thing.</P. But now, since mail is so spammily broken to begin with, we have ZIP-compressed RSS feeds for people who want compressed files, and Apple continues to improve the experience for people using its products if we mail uncompressed PDF files. The RSS feeds are irrelevant to the iPhone - it redirects display of any RSS URL to Apple's "reader.mac.com" Web application, but reader.mac.com cannot access or display secure RSS feeds like ours, so at present, you can't view MDJ or MWJ RSS on the iPhone. Therefore, starting around 1 August (2007.08.01), we're going to change our delivery system to mail PDF versions of MDJ and MWJ without compression, as MIME type "application/pdf", encoded with Base-64. We'll also add a new "no E-mail" type of subscription for people who prefer compressed files in RSS - when a new issue is published, we won't send you E-mail at all, just let you find it in the RSS feed. (After all, if you want compressed files, it makes no sense to mail you an uncompressed PDF or setext version that you don't want. If you still want those, they're still available, on top of the RSS feeds available to all subscribers.) We'll announce this in MDJ and MWJ also, but since the "StuffIt file in a Binhex wrapper" format of MDJ and MWJ PDF delivery hasn't really changed in over a decade (except to move to the "newer" StuffIt 5 archives in the late 1990s), we thought we'd give some of you a heads-up in case you have mail filters, automatic processing, or anything similar. Most of you won't notice any difference except that PDF issues won't need to be decompressed before viewing. In most modern mail applications, you'll see an enclosure icon that opens the issue with a single click - and in iPhone, you can tap the enclosure to read it. The coolness factor there isn't going to wear off for a while around here. # - Posted to Administrivia, MDJ, MWJ on 7/4/07; 3:15:14 PM

Tens of thousands? What tens of thousands?

Given the previous post, it's at least amusing to notice that Business 2.0's "Apple 2.0" blog has now posted about first-weekend iPhone sales, and yet the author somehow manages not to mention his own post from Saturday on the same subject, the one that has numbers he invented out of whole cloth. Commenter "Rezzz" was not so forgetful: "What happened to 'tens of thousands'?" They did sell tens of thousands. Looks like somewhere between 100 - 150 tens of thousands. Meanwhile, DeWitt brought in a couple of millions hits to this website with that headline. Enjoy your bonus, dude. It was perhaps unfair for us to refer to Apple 2.0 blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt as "Elmer Bulwer-Lytton," but "MDJ" had spent time on this blog in May and was not impressed. From coverage in "MDJ" 2007.05.02, available to MWJ readers in the secure RSS feed, discussing the stock options backdating brouhaha of the time, just after noting that the SEC conducted a large investigation and determined that Jobs was not to blame for backdating: Misinformation 2.0 Don't expect any of this to stop those who take great pleasure in seeing Jobs suffer. The "Apple 2.0" blog, an effort of Business 2.0 magazine, recently noted that nearly six years ago, Fortune called Steve Jobs's compensation "highway robbery," prompting protests from Jobs who noted that all of his options were underwater, and therefore not worth US$872 million. Jobs wrote, "They are worth zero." The blog brings this up because the author of that piece from June 2001, Joe Nocera, dredged it up for last Saturday's New York Times, and you could cut the schadenfreude with a knife. Nocera wrote, "What a delicious surprise to discover that Mr. Jobs, who had ostentatiously taken only US$1 in salary since returning to Apple in 1997, had a stock option package bigger than any ever bestowed on such well-known greed heads as Sanford I. Weill of Citigroup or Michael D. Eisner of Disney." According to Nocera, Jobs had options worth US$872 million at the time of the story, which made his public acceptance of a US$1 salary hypocritical, and its exposé "delicious." Nocera wrote that Jobs "railed" about the unfair cover story, offering to sell his options to Fortune for half of their supposed US$872 million value. Jobs pointed out that since the options were underwater, "They were worth zero." Nocera smugly adds, "That is not how options are valued, but never mind." Actually, you should mind, because the article in Fortune was a complete hack job, one covered in MDJ 2001.06.15. The cover said Jobs's options were worth US$872 million, but the story inside said Fortune valued Jobs's options at US$381 million: "We have valued his monstrous options grant at one-third the exercise price of the shares options. And, of course, we've included the US$90 million Gulfstream the Apple board gave him." Not only did Fortune publish two estimates of Jobs's option worth on the same page that differed by half a billion dollars, Jobs was right. As MDJ has noted since at least 2001, Jobs's options were not standard options. They could not be sold or traded, so they had no value to anyone but him. A block of options that big on the open market might reasonably be valued as worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but since they couldn't be sold on the open market, they were worth a total of US$0 until Apple's stock price rose above the option price. It matters not how venomous or sarcastic Nocera gets in his smug condemnation, for the value that Fortune set was wrong in 2001 and it's wrong now. Nocera doesn't seem to care, though, as long as he can keep selling the same article to the mass media. As Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." Oh, here are some other details that the "Apple 2.0" blog didn't tell you in flogging this story. First, blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt is actually the executive editor of Business 2.0 magazine, which, like Fortune is published by Time, Inc. Before joining Business 2.0, Elmer-DeWitt worked for Time for 27 years, where his work included a not-so-flattering 1998 mini-profile of Steve Jobs, and where he was science editor when sister publication Fortune ran the originally incorrect story. Elmer-DeWitt sees his blog as a counterpoint to "fan blogs," because he says he is "someone who loves MACs and can bring a journalist's skepticism." (Yes, that's his spelling of "Macs.") It's too bad that Elmer-DeWitt didn't let readers invoke their own skepticism by alerting them to the fact that he was praising a former colleague's attempt to rehabilitate a discredited story for his own company's publication. Perhaps that's because Elmer-DeWitt just got a check from Business 2.0 "in the area of US$2000 to US$2500" for writing the number-two Business 2.0 blog in the first calendar quarter of 2007. That's a lot of incentive to get readers, especially for a blog that spends much of its time repeating rumors and mocking fan sites that don't share Elmer-DeWitt's "journalist's skepticism." So, just to recap - claiming that underwater options that can't be sold at all are worth hundreds of millions of dollars for six years despite plain facts is applying journalistic skepticism, but earning US$8000 to US$10,000 per year to repost items from Wired, AppleInsider, and MacDailyNews is blogging "outside the reality distortion field." You make the call. It's unclear how well the whole "we're experts" thing is working out for Business 2.0 - just before that issue of MDJ went to press, we learned that Business 2.0 lost every production file for its June 2007 issue on 23 April when its editorial system crashed, and only then did the magazine learn that its backup server hadn't been backing anything up for at least days. They lost everything - the only way they were able to get the magazine out was that it was a monthly (not a weekly), and they had a week to reconstruct all of the art and layouts. The text of all the articles was only saved because they'd sent it to the lawyers for approval. As the article notes, this is the magazine that annually publishes "The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business." Perhaps some of this explain why the News Corp-owned New York Post reported last week that the magazine "is a long way from seeing any of the investments pay off," and may wind up being folded into Fortune magazine - the same one whose completely incorrect stories about Steve Jobs got stroked by Elmer-DeWitt recently. Maybe they'd save some money if they paid the bloggers for quality instead of traffic, as Rezzz implied. # - Posted to In The News, MDJ on 7/2/07; 3:35:30 PM

The installer *probably* doesn't overwrite newer files with older ones

If the business news and security news and press watch is not your style, check out this MacFixIt page. The site has often recommended re-installing "Combo" updates to repair mysterious Mac OS X problems, but MDJ and MWJ have responded by pointing out that this could undo later updates - for example, replacing files from a recent Security Update with older, insecure ones. On Friday, MacFixIt insisted without sourcing that this was not the case. MDJ's publisher asked for sources, so the site's Ben Wilson tested it and found it to be true. That led to another technical diversion through a document that explains the situation, but for some reason is marked as "legacy" even though it seems to be perfectly true. We'll expand on it and clean it up for a future issue of MDJ, but if you want a little technical interlude and the answer to a long-standing question, check it out. There are a couple of other situations not mentioned there where the installer might replace a newer file with an older one, but the good news it that it probably works the way you want it to work. # - Posted to MDJ, MWJ on 4/28/07; 3:12:55 AM

Writing is easy.

All you do is stare a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. —Gene Fowler Repeating that this hasn't been easy doesn't make it any easier on you or on us, but we implore you for just a bit more patience. We're essentially rebooting the entire operation and we're almost to the login screen. We'll make it a better metaphor within the week. # - Posted to MDJ, MWJ on 3/5/07; 4:18:21 AM

An RSS Update

Of course, a Security Update arrived while we were trying to write about Security Updates. That's just how that works. As of tonight, we believe we've fixed the MDJ and MWJ secure RSS feed generators to fix two problems: We're now using ditto to create the ".zip" archives, so they should unzip correctly on just about any Mac OS X system you care to try, and If the previous issue of MWJ was published more than week ago (when the feeds are built), it should automatically include all issues of MDJ published since that issue of MWJ (except those in the last 48 hours, as we originally noted back when we formulated this policy). When the next issue of MWJ arrives, the MDJ issues will vanish from the feed. With any luck, now that this code is completed, it won't run again for weeks or months. We could live with that version of "that's just how that works." # - Posted to MDJ, MWJ on 12/21/06; 1:33:30 AM

A quick 2006.12.18 update

MDJ 2006.12.18 is now in distribution - and we've verified that the ".zip" file in the secure RSS feed both downloads and decompresses properly. The setext version has a proper digital signature, too. If MWJ is not out by Tuesday night, MDJ 2006.12.18 will appear in the secure MWJ RSS feed. We still have to do that by hand, but after last week, we think we remember all the steps. After that, MWJ should return to a normal weekend schedule through the end of February, with one weekend off (though we don't know which one yet). # - Posted to MDJ, MWJ on 12/18/06; 5:43:12 AM

Oops.

We had some problems trying to get Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro to digitally certify today's issue (MDJ 2006.11.20) - the program did it just fine, but intead of growing the file size by 5% or so, it bloated it by 44%. We don't need to add 44% to the size of a single issue for a digital signature, so we signed it in Acrobat 7. Unfortunately, in the confusion, we kind of forgot to digitally sign the setext version of MDJ 2006.11.20 at all. Sorry about that - little things are still falling through the cracks, but we're working on it. # - Posted to MDJ on 11/20/06; 3:50:37 AM

Something you can do to help

[Note: This item was originally posted on September 28, but for some reason, it keeps vanishing. Restoring it occasionally bumps it to the top of the home page, but unless you see an "Update:" at the top or bottom, there's nothing new for those who've already read it. Sorry for any inconvenience.] We're all extremely grateful for the E-mails and other things that have poured in since Matt first discussed his diagnosis of heart failure, and the new batch that came in today after it was disclosed in MDJ 2006.09.28. Many people have asked if they can do anything, no matter how small, and after reading today's E-mail, there is one thing everyone can do that would help us tremendously. Stop using StuffIt 7 or 8. Seriously. We've distributed the PDF versions of MDJ and MWJ as binhexed StuffIt archives for over ten years, because until the days of Mac OS X, that was the best way to save bandwidth while preserving the "PDF " file type and "CARO" creator type necessary to allow double-clicking the issue files. In the past couple of years, readers have requested a switch to Zip archives because they're easier to decode on other platforms. We would have preferred switching to StuffIt X because, frankly, it makes smaller files, and we're all about saving bandwidth - but the free StuffIt Expander for Linux can't decode these files, and a few people do process their E-mail on Linux boxes, so we've resisted the temptation. But for some reason we don't really understand, a lot of people seem to have stopped paying attention to StuffIt when Apple stopped bundling it. StuffIt 7 was released over three and a half years ago, and a lot has changed on Mac OS X since then. That was pre-Safari, for pete's sake. StuffIt 9 (released two full years ago, before Tiger) added important new decompression algorithms to keep up with the latest in Zip technology, as well as to support new StuffIt features. We know that Aladdin/Allume/Smith Micro has not always made upgrading StuffIt easy, especially if you want a new Expander while keeping the functionality of an older paid version. Some versions of Expander installed a "replacement" StuffIt framework that made older paid versions stop working. Even today, Smith Micro requires you to provide your E-mail address to get a link to the StuffIt Expander download page, and notes that by doing so and clicking the links, you are signing up for an opt-out mailing list about new products. We're glad that you're no longer forced to download the entire "StuffIt Standard" product and install it for evaluation just to get Expander at all. Even so, this is the kind of behavior that has dropped Expander from a "must-have" to "must-tolerate" product. Nonetheless, if you use StuffIt Expander, you are well advised to use a current version. If you're unwilling to try the brand new Expander 11.0, the same download page offers Expander 10.0.2. If you have multiple versions already, we advise that no one use any version of StuffIt Expander older than version 9.0.2. Version 9.0.1 and earlier simply cannot expand all modern StuffIt and Zip archives. If you're not using at least version 9.0.2, you need to update, or alternately, accept that there are archives in the wild that you cannot decompress - and some of them may come from us. Paying for StuffIt is no longer a no-brainer (we hope to take a full look at version 11 in an upcoming issue of MDJ and MWJ), but that doesn't obviate the need to stay up-to-date if you do use the free StuffIt Expander. We try to stay up-to-date on lots of tools to get the smallest files possible, and we simply cannot guarantee that we can create files that old utilities know how to decompress. It's more of a pain than it should be, but one of the best ways you can help us deliver issues to you is to have a current (i.e., 9.0.2 or later) version of StuffIt Expander. We hope to make Zip archives that either the command-line or the Finder can decompress, but even that may require current versions of those programs (i.e., Tiger or later). The best way to make sure you can decompress anything that anyone creates is to use StuffIt Expander 9.0.2 or later. Just that simple change would probably drop our support E-mail by 25% per month, believe it or not. Oh, and if you're unhappy with current StuffIt offerings or practices, tell Smith Micro. Be specific about what you don't like and what you'd like to see instead. We know they want to hear from you. # - Posted to MDJ, MWJ on 11/1/06; 10:54:31 AM

A note to MDJ PDF subscribers

We've installed StuffIt Deluxe 11 on the production system, and in preparing MDJ 2006.09.28 for distribution, we noticed that the new version no longer creates classic StuffIt (".sit") archives, the kind we've used since 1996 in distributing PDF files. This gives us a chance to start converting to ZIP compression as so many of you have requested. Unfortunately, our distribution software was not expecting this, so we Zipped the issue and wrapped it in Binhex so the MIME type would still be correct. However, the enclosed file is not named "MDJ_20060928.pdf.sit", but rather "Archive.zip". This may affect some of your mail clients or automatic issue receiving scripts, for which we apologize. This is likely not the final word on Zip-based distribution, but we thought we should warn you of the change. Update: We are getting reports from people who cannot unzip the archive in today's E-mail delivery. If that happens to you, try the version in the secure RSS feed for your subscription - we've also heard that it works just fine, even though the two files were created by the same program (DropStuff 11). The file length on Archive.zip, once the binhex encoding has been removed, should be 159,666 bytes. The file length for MDJ_20060928.pdf.zip in the RSS feed should be 160,165 bytes. We're not sure what difference the extra 499 bytes make, but obviously, we'll attempt to fix E-mail delivery before our next issue. # - Posted to MDJ on 9/28/06; 5:33:30 AM

A few answers to current questions

I last got MDJ or MWJ on such-and-such a date. Has there been an issue published since then? Our status page lists the current issues of both MDJ and MWJ, including issue sizes, and when distribution began - and it's been there (and up-to-date) for more than five years. Unless your or our Internet connection is down, this information is always instantly available to you. As of this summer, subscribers can also get the same information in their secure RSS feeds. We sent this information to all current subscribers in June, and it's been part of the "Welcome to MDJ" (or 'MWJ') letter for all subscribers since then. See here for more information about how difficult it's proven to be to tell people about this. Have you published anything since then? We published over 30 pages of on-the-spot information from WWDC 2006 right here, available to all MDJ and MWJ subscribers. See here for our attempts to tell people about this and how they seem to not have worked very well. We've also provided a few updates on this news blog, including an article on why E-mail is broken, and why we can't use it to tell you things the way we'd like. It's not a standard "issue," but it's still a significant amount of material that some of you didn't seem to know about. Where's the next issue of MWJ? We're sorry if we haven't made this very clear somehow, but due to problems with the ventilation in our office, working here this summer has made staff members seriously ill. We're talking emergency rooms, chest X-rays, heavy-duty prescriptions for weeks on end, significant respiratory distress, inability to sleep due to breathing problems, extensive coughing fits, multiple doctor visits - seriously ill. We haven't been trying to emphasize this because, honestly, there's really nothing more boring than stories about how other people are sick, is there? But from the questions we're getting, we apparently need to make clearer that the fungus in our office this summer is not like a day of a hay fever attack - it was a continuous, slow-to-build, undiscovered source of poison in the air we breathe. At this point, we're basically just extremely lucky that more staff members didn't get even more ill than they did. The most distressing thing about it is that when it was just getting started in June and July, and we had no idea what was going on or how serious it was, we kept spending more time in the office trying not to fall behind. The symptoms were of allergy attacks (not infections), and it seemed perfectly reasonable to go slow in front of a computer instead of at home on bedrest, so we kept trying to get more work done - and every moment we tried, we were getting even more seriously ill and had no idea. This does not heal instantly. We've had the ventilation fixed for nearly a week, but the staffers who work here are still having severe coughing fits and other symptoms of the toxins clearing out. (This is similar to what Matt experienced near the end of WWDC, he says - after a week away from the bad ventilation, he felt like he was getting worse, but now he realizes his lungs were just trying to expel the last of the nastiness.) It really has been a nasty episode, and we're still amazed that we managed to get MDJ 2006.08.30 out the door (now available to all MWJ subscribers in their RSS feeds). We're hoping to get on a regular schedule next week, and we're planning to spend time away from the studio Friday and Saturday to help make sure things are on track. (That is, if being outside for a long spell and then coming back to the studio makes us feel worse, it's a good sign something is still wrong. We have felt significantly better this week, but a sanity check seems like an excellent idea. We have follow-up doctor appointments this month as well. There's really only one thing we want to do more than get back to a June-style schedule around here - we hope you miss us for the same reasons we miss providing the high-quality information and reality check you expect from MDJ and MWJ. That one thing we want more? Unobstructed, regular, oxygen-rich breathing. Once that happens, the rest should be a cinch. But how come I haven't seen any traffic on the MacJournals-Talk (or, as some still call it, MWJ-Talk) mailing list? The discussion list has been unavailable for months due to abuses of the honor system, and with everything else going on, we have not had the time to try to complete the work tying it to the subscription database. If you didn't know this, please let us know how we could have communicated it better other than trying to send E-mail to everyone, which has its own set of problems (again, see here for more information on those problems - basically, even if we put important news in the very front of an issue, a lot of people just don't see it, and then ask us months later what's going on). We'd really like to know how to do this better. # - Posted to Administrivia, MDJ, MWJ on 9/8/06; 3:17:39 PM

Here we go again with the hidden meanings

Our publisher is still ill, thanks in no small part to him having spent lots of hours at work while sick earlier this summer, not realizing it was the building making him more ill with every breath. But we've already noticed the hoopla over Apple's upcoming 2006.09.12 media event - a card that says "It's Showtime" is now all but universally assumed to indicate announcements about digital movies. And, for all we know, that may be exactly what happens. But, we asked ourselves, didn't we go through some similar readings of the tea leaves not too long ago in an incredibly similar situation? Why, yes! Yes, we did. From MDJ 2006.03.15: On 2006.02.28, Apple held a "media event" for reporters to "see some fun new products." Even though that's all the invitation promised, speculation immediately began that Apple was about to introduce everything from Intel-powered iBooks to the mythical "touch-screen video iPod," inexplicably referred to by some as the "true video iPod." Some people even obsessed over the iCal-style illustration on the invitation, wondering what it meant. (It meant "28 February 2006.") In other words, "Apple watchers" turned Apple's simple media invitation to a product announcement on its own R&D Campus (not at Moscone Center, not at Flint Center, not at a trade show) into huge expectations for the reinvention of all forms of computing and entertainment. Then, when Apple did exactly what it said it would do and announced two "fun" products - the Mac Mini (Early 2006) with better entertainment features and the iPod Hi-Fi speaker system, these same "Apple watchers" were "disappointed" that Apple did not meet the expectations for products they had made up out of whole cloth. We have no insight as to what Apple intends to announce in six days - but neither do any of these people trying to discern answers from the design of the invitation, especially given how far off they were last time. We're just saying. # - Posted to MDJ on 9/6/06; 5:00:18 PM

Good ideas spread like daring wildfire

Here's a section from MDJ 2006.08.30: Given the secrecy, duplicity, and inconsistency that has marked Maynor and Ellch's presentation, starting with going to the press to take on that Mac user "aura of smugness" before Black Hat and continuing through the next month, there are only two easy ways for the pair's credibility to be restored. One would be for Apple to release a patch for the problem they found, describing it and fixing it so that everyone would be free to talk about it. That, of course, presumes the bug exists and affects Apple's hardware, not just third-party drivers. The other way is trivial. Maynor or Ellch (or both) need to perform their demonstration attack not in front of people like Krebs who don't know the platform well, but in front of recognized Macintosh security and networking experts who do. We'd nominate Glenn Fleishman, but Alan Oppenheimer at Open Door Networks or Macworld Labs would be just fine, too. The task is simple: Maynor or Ellch would bring whatever tools they wanted to use for their attack, but the target machine would be a stock, unmodified, black MacBook computer (though extra RAM might be allowable), with AirPort turned on and a valid network available if the researchers need it. They would then be free to do whatever they wanted to attack the MacBook except physically touch it. If they can repeat the demo feat of logging into the MacBook, with or without root privileges, and create and delete files on the desktop, they are redeemed. If they can't do it in, say, two hours, then they withdraw their claims about MacBook vulnerabilities and apologize to everyone involved. The experts who monitor the test would have to agree not to divulge details about how the vulnerability works, of course, but that's a small thing - if the vulnerability is real, Mac experts won't want it in the wild any more than Maynor and Ellch would. Less than two days later, John Gruber took this upon himself! I’m issuing the following challenge to David Maynor and Jon Ellch: If you can hijack a brand-new MacBook out of the box, it’s yours to keep. Gruber's version of the challenge doesn't allow extra RAM in the MacBook, nor does it require a black MacBook as seen in the demo, or stipulate the presence of known Macintosh security experts like Fleishman, Oppenheimer, or the Macworld Labs folks. Still, if either Maynor or Ellch demanded these things, we suspect Gruber might acquiesce - and you have to admire him stepping up and putting his own money at risk for it. Third-party monitors might make Maynor and Ellch feel like they're not being railroaded, but if Gruber wants to pay for the MacBook, we say he has the right to watch the attack succeed or fail - provided no one tries to snoop on the network packets as Maynor and Ellch have always said they feared. But especially now, with a stock machine ready for the demonstration any time this week that they want, Maynor and Ellch either need to put up or shut up. Either they can compromise a MacBook's internal AirPort Extreme hardware with no additional user requirements, or they can't and have just enjoyed the attention from almost publicly claiming that they could. They need to do it and be revered, or note the end of their 15 minutes and go away. If the duo will not demonstrate this attack under controlled conditions now, a full month after demoing it at Black Hat, no reasonable person should be expected to believe the vulnerability ever existed. (MWJ subscribers: This issue of MDJ is now in your MWJ RSS feed per our previous policy of providing MDJ issues when MWJ is delayed - enjoy!) # - Posted to MDJ, MWJ on 9/3/06; 1:09:42 PM

Pre-WWDC MDJ and MWJ Status (final)

MDJ 2006.08.04 is in distribution and MWJ 2006.08.05 have both been distributed: double or triple size, figures and tables, even a sidebar. It's a festival on your screen! We'll update you from San Francisco this weekend. Part of the original item from Wednesday: With this heat wave now having affected almost all of the United States, we appreciate that everyone seems to understand what working with sub-optimal cooling is like. According to Weather Underground, we've had temperatures of 100°F or more for 18 of the past 23 days, a bad time to be without good cooling. (It's still not perfect, but it's functional - slightly distressing, because the current system was installed brand new while we were away from the building for WWDC 2001!) We'll replace this item with further updates on our pre-WWDC issues as they transpire. # - Posted to MDJ, MWJ on 8/4/06; 11:20:58 PM

A few July notes

Just a couple of things that you might want to know: A few subscribers have asked about seeing nothing lately on the MacJournals-Talk mailing list, a high signal-to-noise mailing list we've offered for years to paying subscribers of MDJ and MWJ. Your mail client hasn't gone haywire - the list has been down for a few weeks. We mentioned about a year ago that we intended to tie membership on the mailing list to subscription status, because, sadly, the honor system was not working: people who were not subscribers (or who dropped their subscriptions) were continuing to use the mailing list for free support, sneak peeks at issues, and all kinds of other goodies - with resources paid for by subscribers, of course. That had to change. Alas, the code work isn't going as quickly as we'd hoped - the list server doesn't get its addresses from the subscription database. We can modify the database to send commands to the list server to add and drop subscribers, but if the two get out of sync, it will confuse everyone. (Also, that would mean we'd have to disable manual unsubscribing to avoid sync problems, and we're wary of making you get list mail until one of us gets around to changing it for you.) We plan to bring it back when we figure out how to make it work for subscribers the way we'd always intended. (We really were surprised at the amount of freeloading going on.) Also, as you may have noticed, with all the new systems and publishing finally in place (including this blog), we've raised the price on MDJ and MWJ for the first time in seven years. Oddly enough, MWJ's new price of US$14.95 per month is the same price that MDJ cost nearly a decade ago - for about the same number of pages per week. We still think both are a bargain at twice the price, and we'll continue to try to prove that to everyone. Coming on Wednesday: public release of the 2005-2006 MDJ Power 25! # - Posted to Administrivia, MDJ, MWJ on 7/3/06; 5:41:58 PM

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